Navy ships on hold; still ready to attack

The U.S. is keeping all its warships in place in the eastern Mediterranean even after President Barack Obama pushed back the timetable Saturday for a potential attack on Syria, POLITICO has learned.

The five American guided-missile destroyers and one amphibious transport are going to continue to stay in place for now, a Defense official said — despite a new delay that comes as Obama seeks congressional approval to strike Damascus, which might not come for another week, if at all.

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The destroyers USS Stout, USS Gravely, USS Mahan, USS Barry and USS Ramage are all deployed to the region, each carrying dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles. Also available is the amphibious transport USS San Antonio, which is carrying about 700 troops from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, along with some of their aircraft and amphibious equipment.

A few of the ships the Navy has kept in the area have been at sea for several months – the San Antonio deployed from Norfolk, Va., in March — but commanders have held them in place in case of an order from Washington after Syria’s Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack was revealed.

Defense officials did not – and do not ever – address the movements of U.S. Navy submarines, which also may be lurking in the waters off Syria and could be called upon to launch missiles.

Obama said Saturday that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey had assured him the military would be ready to execute his orders whenever he gives them.

“Our military has positioned assets in the region,” Obama said. “The chairman of the Joint Chiefs has informed me that we are prepared to strike whenever we choose. Moreover, the chairman has indicated to me that our capacity to execute this mission is not time-sensitive; it will be effective tomorrow, or next week, or one month from now. And I’m prepared to give that order.”

Obama’s remarks suggested that American commanders evidently are not worried about all the time to prepare that Syrian President Bashar Assad will have wound up with after last week’s initial rumblings about the White House desire for a Syria strike.

If the Pentagon is worried about Assad trying to move weapons or other key equipment into hardened shelters, or placing human shields next to likely targets – as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein did in 1990 before the Persian Gulf War – it isn’t saying so.

That could be just as well, from the White House’s perspective, since no one seemed able to say Saturday exactly when Congress might vote on an authorization to use military force in Syria, or whether it would pass. Lawmakers already have a full agenda when they’re scheduled to return to Washington on Sept. 9 – including a debate over whether they can avert the next round of the sequestration budget cuts.

Unless Congress acts, the Pentagon would lose another $52 billion across the board on Oct. 1, which Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and all his top lieutenants say would be badly disruptive. Just one day before Obama’s remarks, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced that Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy Tom Hicks had been tasked with building “a comprehensive assessment of the business challenges facing the Navy and Marine Corps.”

Also Friday, Obama quietly notified Congress that budget pressure had forced him to make “tough choices” and authorize a 1 percent pay increase for troops starting Jan. 1, as compared with the 1.8 percent authorized in this year’s House bill. Republican defense advocates were livid, and their anger carried over after Obama’s announcement Saturday.

Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces panel, said he thought Congress should not authorize a strike on Syria while sequestration remains in effect.

“The president has failed to make the case to the American people,” he said. “There are significant risks to launching an attack on Syria and we don’t know who we are fighting for.”